27 sept. 2011

Bad Arguments --the Ontological Proof

I will be examining some bad arguments in favor of (and against) religious belief in this blog. Once in a while I might find a good argument.

***

The ontological proof, associated with Anselm and later with Descartes, begins by imagining a perfect being. What would this perfect being be like? It would be all-knowing, all-powerful, etc... And to be really perfect it would have to exist. Therefore such a perfect being does, in fact, exist.

Now the spectacular flaw in such an argument, as Kant pointed out, is to view existence itself as a predicate similar to others. In other words, you cannot begin by imagining a being and then forget, at the end, that it is a fabrication of your imagination. Imagine a perfect swimming pool. It would have to bring together certain characteristics considered ideal in a pool. The water would always be the perfect temperature and would never be dirty; it would never allow anyone to drown it, etc... We cannot then add to this list of predicates that this swimming pool must also exist, and that therefore there is such a pool somewhere.

1 comentario:

You now also have posts on religion. How cool! I'll include this in my Link Encyclopedia.

The problem with this particular argument is that in order to imagine a perfect being, you need a perfect imagination. But only a perfect being can possess one. That is, if we are looking for an imagination (and, consequently, a being) that would be perfect for absolutely everybody.So unless a human claims that s/he is god, they cannot possibly imagine this perfect being.

Páginas

Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."